Jasper - Dana Perino

 Had to do a portrait of this beautiful famous dog! 

The Five

 Had a whim to draw Jessie Watters and Greg Gutfield on the Fox Tv show The Five.   Sent in and they showed on air.  Was a thrill to be mentioned on national tv to 3.6 millions viewers!  

Elvis

Had to do one of our hometown Elvis.

Jed Clampett

Well Doggie!! Jed Clampett.   Buddy Epsen was a dancer originally  and was the Tin Man for 10 days in the Wizard of Oz till he became very sick from the aluminum dust and almost died.  But will always be known as the poor mountaineer who barely kept his family fed.  Hope you enjoy my latest pencil.

Floyd the barber

Hope you enjoy this pencil of Floyd the barber!   He was such a beloved simpleton!   Just love the show so much because it brings back that simple time before all the awful things going on now.  Miss the days before social media.

Otis

I can’t get into an Otis elevator and not think of this guy.  He really was a great actor on Andy Griffith and I loved all the laughs he brought to the show.  No one could play a nice lovable drunk like Otis Campbell.   I think I’m done with this one and hope you enjoy.  11x14 pencil

John Wayne

Always enjoyed watching him as a kid,  great actor and man.  Pastelmatt 11x14.

Clint Eastwood

One of my favorite actors.  Really enjoyed watching him growing up.  These are pencil on 11x14 Stonehenge.   Did this picture twice,  sold the first one

Dual Commission

Did this for a friend I work with of his son.  Wanted two of them so I got to make the same mistakes twice!

Portrait of Megan

Working on portrait of my oldest daughter Megan. Trying to soften some edges and correct the placement of eyes and mouth. Teeth are very difficult to get right. I once saw  where a famous painter stated. "A portrait is a painting of someone with something wrong with the mouth". It has been fun to paint but I've tried to stay too tight and causes me not to work with thin paint. I tend to push around small bits of paint instead of laying down good mixed color. Oh well, something to work on.! I may do this same painting in pastel.

Pastel of my Grandmother Addie Wilkins

Pastel on Canson paper approximately 16x20.

I  took a portrait class from Daniel Green at his annual summer workshop in his home in North Salem NY back in 2005.   He demonstrated a pastel portrait one evening from a live model that I was absolutely mesmerized with.  I have been using his techniques of marking off the head into four equal sections, using Nupastels to lay in the drawing and then working from dark to light with softer pastels.  I did this painting 4 or 5 years ago and have learned so much since then.  This was a quick painting to give my mother for Christmas.  My grandmother has since passed away but this painting hangs in my mom's home for her to remember how special and loving my grandmother was.  I also have my grandfather posted in this blog in another post.  We miss you MawMaw!

Redo of Abby

 Redo of the portrait of Abby. Spent a long time on this one!

Pastel of Don

Started this pastel of my step father. Haven't done a pastel in awhile. Was really fun getting back into it.

Pastel of Abby

Pastel on canson: Work in progress of my youngest daughter Abby. Doing the pastel as a study for an oil painting to come later.  Plan to paint all three daughters again. I have been studying with a very talented artist here in Memphis named Frank Morris who does astounding work.

http://www.frankmorrisportraits.com

My current goal is to become better at judging values and edges.

Jenna in pencil

Portrait of Jenna my middle daughter in pencil and charcoal 11x14.  Jenna was valedictorian of her class this year,won an art contest for the school which puts her painting on the Shelby County school calendar for this next year.  She also won a school essay contest which earned her a lunch with an author from a book her class read and the school art contest to have her drawing on T-Shirts that the whole school wore on the end of year picnic.  She is a very talented piano player and loves to read.

This was the first of three pencil portraits I tried of each of my daughters.  I used Arches paper and was very pleased with the results.  It is a very forgiving paper and took a lot of abuse.  I've only used three of the sheets so far and I think there are 40 in the binding, so I need to get busy.

I did this picture free hand after using the grid methods for so long.  I always felt like I was cheating using the grid method and found it to be very tedious and frustrating.  I took a class by Daniel Green, a very well know portrait artist a few years ago and was fascinated by how he could capture a likeness using proportions and angles.  I began trying it out and really liked the results.  I found it much easier to get a likeness by just drawing rather than looking for shortcuts to drawing.  I even used to use a projector many years ago but it always had a rather odd look to it in the end and put it away in the attic about 10 years ago!

Papa

My grandfather loved to sell watermelons and decided to paint this portrait with the green and white shirt just like the mellons he used to sell. He was a share cropper in Medon Tn. and sold watermelons to make money on the side. I signed the picture and put a watermelon with my signature. He is greatly missed and was a very good man.

Jenna portrait

This is Jenna even younger. I snapped this picture of her playing in the back yard. I loved the expression on her face and had to paint her. The quality of the photo is bad for now. Had to take without a flash since it is under glass and the glare kills the picture.

Abby portrait

This is my youngest daughter Abby when she was much younger. Very smart and talented dancer. She has so many friends and loves her IPOD.

Jenna portrait

This is Jenna my middle daughter when she was younger. Also very talented in art and piano. She recently won valedictorian of her middle school.

Megan portrait

This is my oldest daughter Megan. She is a very talented artist and guitar player and a wonderful person.